Master and Commander

by Patrick O'Brian

  Jack knew very well what they were about. In the Royal Navy the reversed ensign was an emphatic signal of distress: the Calpe and the people in Gibraltar, seeing it, had supposed the Hannibal meant she was afloat again and was begging to be towed off. They had filled every available boat with every available man—with unattached seamen and, above all, with the highly-skilled shipwrights and artificers of the dockyard. 'Yes,' he said, with all the open sincerity of one bluff seaman talking to another. 'I do. That is what they are about, for sure. But certainly if you put a shot across the bow of the leading cutter they will turn round—they imagine everything is over.'

  'Ah, that's it,' said Captain Pallière. An eighteen-pounder creaked round and settled squarely on the nearest boat. 'But come,' said Captain Palliere, putting his hand on the lock and smiling at Jack, 'perhaps it would be better not to fire.' He countermanded the gun, and one by one the boats reached the Hannibal, where the waiting Frenchmen quietly led their crews below. 'Never mind,' said Captain Pallière, patting him on the shoulder. 'The Admiral is signalling: come ashore with me, and we will try to find decent quarters for you and your people, until we can heave off and refit.'

  The quarters allotted to the Sophie's officers, a house up at the back of Algeciras, had an immense terrace overlooking the bay, with Gibraltar to the left, Cabrita Point to the right and the dim land of Africa looming ahead. The first person Jack saw upon it, standing there with his hands behind his back and looking down on his own dismasted ship, was Captain Ferris of the Hannibal. Jack had been shipmates with him during two commissions and had dined with him only last year, but the post-captain was hardly recognizable as the same man—had aged terribly, and shrunk; and although they now fought the battle over again, pointing out the various manoeuvres, misfortunes and baffled intentions, he spoke slowly, with an odd uncertain hesitation, as though what had happened were not quite real, or had not happened to him.

  'So you were aboard the Desaix, Aubrey,' he said, after a while. 'Was she much cut up?'

  'Not so badly as to be disabled, sir, as far as I could collect. She was not much holed below the waterline, and none of her lower masts was badly wounded: if she don't bilge they will put her to rights presently—she has an uncommon seamanlike set of officers and men.'

  'How many did she lose, do you suppose?'

  'A good many, I am sure—but here is my surgeon, who certainly knows more about it than I do. May I name Dr Maturin? Captain Ferns. My God, Stephen!' he cried, starting back. He was tolerably used to carnage, but he had never seen anything quite like this. Stephen might have come straight out of a busy slaughterhouse. His sleeves, the whole of the front of his coat up to his stock and the stock itself were deeply soaked, soaked through and through and stiff with drying blood. So were his breeches: and wherever his linen showed it, too, was dark red-brown.

  'I beg pardon,' he said, 'I should have shifted my clothes, but it seems that my chest was shattered—destroyed entirely.'

  'I can let you have a shirt and some breeches,' said Captain Ferris. 'We are much of a size.' Stephen bowed.

  'You have been lending the French surgeons a hand?' said Jack.

  'Just so.'

  'Was there a great deal to do?' asked Captain Ferris.

  'About a hundred killed and a hundred wounded,' said Stephen.

  'We had seventy-five and fifty-two,' said Captain Ferris.

  'You belong to the Hannibal, sir?' asked Stephen.

  'I did, sir,' said Captain Ferris. 'I struck my colours,' he said in a wondering tone and at once began to sob, staring open-eyed at them—at one and then at the other.

  'Captain Ferris,' said Stephen, 'pray tell me, how many mates has your surgeon? And have they all their instruments? I am going down to the convent to see your wounded as soon as I have had a bite, and I dispose of two or three sets.'

  'Two mates, sir,' said Captain Ferris. 'As for their instruments I fear I cannot say. It is good in you, sir—most Christian—let me fetch you this shirt and breeches—you must be damned uncomfortable.' He came back with a bundle of clean clothes wrapped in a dressing-gown, suggested that Dr Maturin might operate in the gown, as he had seen done after the First of June, when there was a similar shortage of clean linen. And during their odd, scrappy meal, brought to them by staring, pitiful maidservants, with red and yellow sentries guarding the door, he said, 'After you have looked to my poor fellows, Dr Maturin—if you have any benevolence left after you have looked to them, I say, it would be a charitable act to prescribe me something in the poppy or mandragora line. I was strangely upset today, I must confess, and I need what is it? The knitting up of ravelled care? And what is more, since we are likely to be exchanged in a few days, I shall have a court-martial on top of it all.'

  'Oh, as for that, sir,' cried Jack, throwing himself back in his chair, 'you cannot possibly have any misgivings—never was a clearer case of—'

  'Don't you be so sure, young man,' said Captain Ferris. 'Any court-martial is a perilous thing, whether you are in the right or the wrong—justice has nothing much to do with it. Remember poor Vincent of the Weymouth: remember Byng—shot for an error of judgment and for being unpopular with the mob. And think of the state of feeling in Gibraltar and at home just now—six ships of the line beaten off by three French, and one taken—a defeat, and the Hannibal taken.'

  This degree of apprehension in Captain Ferris seemed to Jack a kind of wound, the result of lying hard aground under the fire of three shore-batteries, a ship of the line and a dozen heavy gun-boats, and of being terribly hammered for hours, dismasted and helpless. The same thought, in a slightly different shape, occurred to Stephen. 'What is this trial of which he speaks?' he asked later. 'Is it factual, or imaginary?'

  'Oh, it is factual enough,' said Jack.

  'But he has done nothing amiss, surely? No one can pretend he ran away or did not fight as hard as ever he could.'

  'But he lost his ship. Every captain of a King's ship that is lost must stand his trial at court-martial.'

  'I see. A mere formality in his case, no doubt.'

  'In his case, yes,' said Jack. 'His anxiety is unfounded—a sort of waking nightmare, I take it.'

  But the next day, when he went down with Mr Daiziel to see the Sophie's crew in their disaffected church and to tell them of the flag of truce from the Rock, it seemed to him a little more reasonable—less of a sick fantasy. He told the Sophies that both they and the Hannibals were to be exchanged—that they should be in Gibraltar for dinner—dried peas and salt horse for dinner, no more of these foreign messes—and although he smiled and waved his hat at the roaring cheers that greeted his news, there was a black shadow in the back of his mind.

  The shadow deepened as be crossed the bay in the Caesar's barge; it deepened as he waited in the antechamber to report himself to the Admiral. Sometimes he sat and sometimes he walked up and down the room, talking to other officers as people with urgent business were admitted by the secretary. He was surprised to receive so many congratulations on the Cacafuego action—it seemed so long ago now as almost to belong to another life. But the congratulations (though both generous and kind) were a little on the cursory side, for the atmosphere in Gibraltar was one of severe and general condemnation, dark depression, strict attention to arduous work, and a sterile wrangling about what ought to have been done.

  When at last he was received he found Sir James almost as old and changed as Captain Ferris; the Admiral's strange, heavy-lidded eyes looked at him virtually without expression as he made his report; there was not a word of interruption, not a hint of praise or blame, and this made Jack so uneasy that if it had not been for a list of heads he had written on a card that he kept in the palm of his hand, like a schoolboy, he would have deviated into rambling explanations and excuses. The Admiral was obviously very tired, but his quick mind extracted the necessary facts and he noted them down on a slip of paper. 'What do you make of the state of the French ships, Captain Aubrey?' he asked.

  'The De
saix is now afloat, sir, and pretty sound; so is the Indomptable. I do not know about the Formidable and Hannibal, but there is no question of their being bilged; and in Algeciras the rumour is that Admiral Linois sent three officers to Cadiz yesterday and another early this morning to beg the Spaniards and Frenchmen there to come round and fetch him out.'

  Admiral Saumarez put his hand to his forehead. He had honestly believed they would never float again, and he had said as much in his report. 'Well, thank you, Captain Aubrey,' he said, after a moment, and Jack stood up. 'I see you are wearing your sword,' observed the Admiral.

  'Yes, sir. The French captain was good enough to give it back to me.'

  'Very handsome in him, though I am sure the compliment was quite deserved; and I have little doubt the court-martial will do the same. But, you know, it is not quite etiquette to ship it until then: we will arrange your business as soon as possible—poor Ferris will have to go home, of course, but we can see to you here. You are only on parole, I believe?'

  'Yes, sir: waiting for an exchange.'

  'What a sad bore. I could have done with your help—the squadron is in such a state . . . Well, good day to you, Captain Aubrey,' he said, with a hint of a smile, or at least a lightening in his expression. 'As you know, of course, you are under nominal arrest, so pray be discreet.'

  He had known it perfectly well, of course, in theory; but the actual words were a blow to his heart, and he walked through the crowded, busy streets of Gibraltar in a state of quite remarkable unhappiness. When he reached the house where he was staying, he unbuckled his sword, made an ungainly parcel of it and sent it down to the Admiral's secretary with a note. Then he went for a walk, feeling strangely naked and unwilling to be seen.

  The officers of the Hannibal and the Sophie were on parole: that is to say, until they were exchanged for French prisoners of equal rank they were bound in honour to do nothing against France or Spain—they were merely prisoners in more agreeable surroundings.

  The days that followed were singularly miserable and lonely—lonely, although he sometimes walked with Captain Ferris, sometimes with his own midshipmen and sometimes with Mr Daiziel and his dog. It was strange and unnatural to be cut off from the life of the port and the squadron at such a moment as this, when every able-bodied man and a good many who should never have got out of their beds at all, were working furiously to repair their ships—an active hive, an ant-hill down below, and up here on these heights, on the thin grass and the bare rock between the Moorish wall and the tower above Monkey's Cove, solitary self-communing, doubt, reproach and anxiety. He had looked through all the Gazettes, of course, and there was nothing about either the Sophie's triumph or her disaster: one or two garbled accounts in the newspapers and a paragraph in the Gentleman's Magazine that made it seem like a surprise attack, that was all. As many as a dozen promotions in the Gazettes, but none for him or Pullings and it was a fair bet that the news of the Sophie's capture had reached London at about the same time as that of the Cacafuego. If not before: for the good news (supposing it to have been lost—supposing it to have been in the bag he himself sank in ninety fathoms off Cape Roig) could only have come in a dispatch from Lord Keith, far up the Mediterranean, among the Turks. So there could not be any promotion now until after the court-martial—no such thing as the promotion of prisoners, ever. And what if the trial went wrong? His conscience was very far from being perfectly easy. If Harte had meant this, he had been devilish successful; and he, Jack, had been a famous greenhorn, an egregious flat. Was such malignity possible? Such cleverness in a mere horned scrub? He would have liked to put this to Stephen, for Stephen had a headpiece; and Jack, almost for the first time in his life, was by no means sure of his perfect comprehension, natural intelligence and penetration. The Admiral had not congratulated him: could that conceivably mean that the official view was . . .? But Stephen had no notion of any parole that would keep him out of the naval hospital: the squadron had had more than two hundred men wounded, and he spent almost all his time there. 'You go a-walking,' he said. 'Do for all love go walking up very steep heights—traverse the Rock from end to end—traverse it again and again on an empty stomach. You are an obese subject; your hams quiver as you go. You must weight sixteen or even seventeen stone.'

  'And to be sure I do sweat like a mare in foal,' he reflected, sitting under the shade of a boulder, loosening his waist-band and mopping himself. In an attempt at diverting his mind he privately sang a ballad about the Battle of the Nile:

  We anchored alongside of them like lions bold and free.

  When their masts and shrouds came tumbling down,

  what a glorious sight to see!

  Then came the bold Leander, that noble fifty-four,

  And on the bows of the Franklin she caused her guns to roar;

  Gave her a dreadful drubbing, boys, and did severely maul;

  Which caused them loud for quarter cry and down French colours haul.

  The tune was charming, but the inaccuracy vexed him: the poor old Leander had fifty-two guns, as he knew very well, having directed the fire of eight of them. He turned to another favourite naval song:

  There happened of late a terrible fray,

  Begun upon our St James's day,

  With a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump,

  Thump, thump a thump, thump.

  An ape on a rock no great way off threw a turd at him, quite unprovoked; and when he half rose in protest it shook its wizened fist and gibbered so furiously that he sank down again, so low were his spirits.

  'Sir, sir!' cried Babbington, tearing up the slope, scarlet with hailing and climbing. 'Look at the brig! Sir, look over the point!'

  The brig was the Pasley: they knew her at once. The hired brig Pasley, a fine sailer, and she was crowding sail on the brisk north-west breeze fit to carry everything away.

  'Have a look, sir,' said Babbington, collapsing on the grass in a singularly undisciplined manner and handing up a little brass spyglass. The tube only magnified weakly, but at once the signal flying from the Pasley's masthead leapt out clear and plain—enemy in sight.

  'And there they are, sir,' said Babbington, pointing to a glimmer of topsails over the dark curve of the land beyond the end of the Gut.

  'Come on,' cried Jack, and began labouring up the hill, gasping and moaning, running as fast as he could for the tower, the highest point on the Rock. There were some masons up there, working on the building, an officer of the garrison artillery with a splendid great telescope, and some other soldiers. The gunner very civilly offered Jack his glass: Jack leant it on Babbington's shoulder, focused carefully, gazed, and said, 'There's the Superb. And the Thames. Then two Spanish three-deckers—one's the Real Carlos, I am almost sure: vice-admiral's flagship, in any event. Two seventy-fours. No, a seventy-four and probably an eighty-gun ship.'

  'Argonauta,' said one of the masons.

  'Another three-decker. And three frigates, two French.'

  They sat there silently watching the steady, calm procession, the Superb and the Thames keeping their stations just a mile ahead of the combined squadron as they came up the Gut, and the huge, beautiful Spanish first-rates moving along with the inevitability of the sun. The masons went off to their dinner: the wind backed westerly. The shadow of the tower swept through twenty-five degrees.

  When they had rounded Cabrita Point the Superb and the frigate carried straight on for Gibraltar, while the Spaniards hauled their wind for Algeciras; and now Jack could see that their flagship was indeed the Real Carlos, of a hundred and twelve guns, one of the most powerful ships afloat; that one of the other three-deckers was of the same force; and the third of ninety-six. It was a most formidable squadron—four hundred and seventy-four great guns, without counting the hundred odd of the frigates—and the ships were surprisingly well handled. They anchored over there under the guns of the Spanish batteries as trimly as though they were to be reviewed by the King.

  'Hallo, sir,' said Mowett. 'I thought you would
be up here. I have brought you a cake.'

  'Why, thankee, thankee,' cried Jack. 'I am devilish hungry, I find.' He at once cut a slice and ate it up. How extraordinarily the Navy had changed, he thought, cutting another: when he was a midshipman it would never in a thousand years have occurred to him to speak to his captain, far less bring him cakes; and if it had occurred to him he would never have done so, for fear of his life.

  'May I share your rock, sir?' asked Mowett, sitting down. 'They have come to fetch the Frenchmen out, I do suppose. Do you think we shall go for 'em, sir?'

  'Pompée will never be fit for sea these three weeks,' said Jack dubiously. 'Caesar is cruelly knocked about and must get all her new masts in: but even if they can get her ready before the enemy sail, that only gives us five of the line against ten, or nine if you leave the Hannibal out—three hundred and seventy-six guns to their seven hundred odd, both their squadrons combined. We are short-handed, too.'

  'You would go for them, would not you, sir?' said Babbington; and both the midshipmen laughed very cheerfully.

  Jack gave a meditative jerk of his head, and Mowett said, 'As when enclosing harpooners assail, In hyperborean seas the slumbering whale. What huge things these Spaniards are. The Caesars have petitioned to be allowed to work all day and night, sir. Captain Brenton says they may work all day, but only watch and watch at night. They are piling up juniper-wood fires on the mole to have light.'